Zinsser

Rewriting is the essence of writing well:it's where the game is won or lost. That idea is hard to accept. We all have an emotional equity in our first draft;we can't belie that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't. Most writers don't initially say what they want to say, or say it as well as they could. The newly hatched sentence almost always has something wrong with it. It's not clear. It's not logical. It's verbose.It's klunky. It's pretentious. It's boring. It;s full of clutter. It's full of cliches. It lacks rhythm. It can be read in several different ways.It doesn't lead out of the previous sentence. It doesn't... The point is that clear writing is the result of a lot of tinkering.





I have the problem of not liking to redo essays or paragraphs. But when you are suppose to or have to I do them. The nice thing is that it can bring up your grade. The first thing I do is try to find small things like capitals or endings. Then I read through it to see if it flows. Then try to fix the weak spots. Every time I do one I get a little better. some day I hope I will have it down to getting it perfect.